Blood of Ambrose (22 page)

Ambrosia was eyeing the bridge with great satisfaction from the guardhouse of the inner gate when she heard Lathmar's voice behind her.

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” she said without turning. “You really shouldn't be here without armor, you know.”

“I promise to run like a rabbit at the first bowshot,” the King said, and the Royal Legionaries on the post laughed deferentially. Ambrosia smiled, too, Lathmar could see—presumably because she knew he had spoken with complete honesty.

“It's an hour or so until the Regency Council. Did you have something to discuss with me, Majesty?”

“Yes: two things.” The King caught himself before he said “madam.” She had become more unapproachable and grandmotherly than ever upon taking over the command of Ambrose, but she had taught him, on pain of her severe displeasure, that he must not address her as his superior. As regent, she wielded his legal power, but she was still his servant, as much as the kitchen staff. That was the theory by which she held her power, and she insisted that he abide by it (at least in his manner of speech).

“Let's walk the walls then,” she suggested. They climbed the many stairs leading to the top of Ambrose's high walls; when they finally reached the open air Ambrosia gave her guard and Karn a single gray glare; they retreated out of earshot as she and Lathmar walked the heights.

It was a cold, pale blue day in early spring. The King, who wasn't dressed for the outdoors, soon felt his teeth begin to chatter; Ambrosia took no notice of the cold, but listened intently to him while she eyed the city below.

“The first thing, Grandmother, is Kedlidor.”

“No.”

“You haven't heard me.”

“I've heard him. He wants to be let off from the command of the Royal Legion. He asked me and I told him no. Now he's asked you to ask me, and I still say no.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, he's too good at the job. I know how he hates it, Lathmar. But he has done it superbly, from that first day when he took and held the inner Lonegate and Thorngate. He's completely ignorant of military matters, I grant you, but he has an eye for picking the right subordinate. Plus, he's excellent at training the men—a real fiend for drill. You were inspired when you put him in command of that Kitchen Crusade.”

“Your decision is final, then?”

“It usually is. You should resist being used in this way, Lathmar—as if you were my chamberlain who could wheedle me into changing my mind. You're the sovereign—act like it.”

“Support you without question, is that it?”

“Yes, effectively. But make it seem as if it was your idea all along—as if he should go through me to try to change
your
decision.”

The King said nothing about this. Ambrosia glanced at him, smiled, and said, “What else was there?”

“Morlock says you have asked him to stop training me as a seer.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to tell him you've changed your mind.”

“I haven't.”

“I want you to.”

“The Sight is a dangerous skill for a ruler, Lathmar. To see beneath the surface of things can sometimes be a great advantage, yes, but so much of what we do as rulers involves the surface of things. We shouldn't grow too detached from it. Philosophers rarely make good kings, no matter what the philosophers claim. Besides, it is physically dangerous. Have you kept an eye on Morlock recently?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how ill he is. He has been sending his mind out of his body so frequently these past few months that their connection has grown tenuous.”

“He says there is a danger we aren't facing—”

“Yes, I know: the Protector's Shadow, Urdhven's magical patron. But you have to take problems one at a time, and if Morlock can't even locate this adept in his visions, he must be a very remote danger indeed.”

“Or very well protected.”

Ambrosia made a noise in her throat.

“Grandmother, you saw yesterday how useful the Sight can be to us in our struggle. The more I know, the more I can assist Morlock.”

“That's the short term. We won't be cooped up in Ambrose forever.”

“What is useful here and now will be useful in other places and times.”

Ambrosia smiled and said, “Have you talked to Morlock about this?”

“Yes. He told me he would think about it.”

“Then that is your answer. If Morlock decides to teach you in spite of my request, there is nothing I can do about it. If he decides not to teach you, the same applies. My powers as regent don't cover control of Morlock's mind. Don't mention this to him, however—I'm hoping against hope that he isn't aware of it.”

The King was relieved to hear that there was at least one thing in Ambrose over which she didn't claim direct control. But he didn't say as much.

The Regency Council convened a short while later. Ambrosia was there as regent, of course, and the King (who didn't need to be there, but insisted on knowing what was being done in his name). Morlock and Wyrth were each councillors in their own right, as was Kedlidor—not as Rite-Master, but as head of the Royal Legion.

“As to the City Gate,” Ambrosia was saying, “I think it is high time that we took it. But the time has come, indeed, to do more than that—perhaps make a sortie in force against Urdhven's men in the city.”

Kedlidor was listening solemnly, his face growing longer by the minute. He clearly dreaded the thought of leading his soldiers in house-to-house combat. The King was staring idly out a window, wondering when spring would appear outside the calendar. Wyrth was absentmindedly folding three-dimensional representations of four-dimensional figures as he listened intently to Ambrosia. Morlock sat like a living shadow opposite her, speaking one word to her forty, as now.

“Why?”

“Urdhven has been sounding out the field marshals of the various domains, hoping to strike up an alliance that will break the stalemate against us. He can't have had much luck, or his ally would be here.”

“He should have called for help before he needed it,” Morlock remarked dryly. “No one wants to help someone who needs help.”

“Cynicism makes you talkative, brother. I knew something must. But you see, don't you, that now is the time to move on Urdhven. If he has begun to understand that he can't break the stalemate, now is the time to instill in him the fear that we can.”

“That there is a stalemate at all is our victory,” Wyrth remarked. “But in the long run it may be in the Protector's favor. I agree that an offensive, even a small one, should be our next concern. Urdhven knows now he cannot take Ambrose back by force or by treachery.”

There were thirty bloody months of experience behind those words; they were all silent for a few moments, remembering.

“Still,” Morlock said, breaking the silence, “we cannot take the city. And Urdhven must know this.”

“‘No,’ to both of your ideas, Morlock,” Ambrosia said eagerly. “I begin to see a way we could take the city by a well-timed assault on a gate held by our agents-in-place, along with a civil rebellion led by Genjandro's people inside the city. It would take time to prepare, but we're able to do it if we can afford the time. We may not be able to afford the time; the empire is dividing up into armed duchies, and if it is ever to be united again it must be soon. But Urdhven may not be aware of this. Further—let me finish, please—Urdhven can no longer be sure what we can or cannot do. We have successfully trespassed on his expectations too many times. That uncertainty will eat at him, and it is up to us to ensure that it takes big bites.”

“To what end?” Morlock asked.

“A treaty, of course. We must kill him or treat with him, and just now he is out of our reach, even if we could figure out how to negate his magical protections. And he has the same dilemma regarding us. Sooner or later we must sit down at a table and cut a deal.”

“Hmph.”

“Don't grunt at me. Of course we hate him—”

“I don't hate him. But I could never trust him.”

“Well, let me tell you, brother,
I
hate him. I hate him. I hate that maggotty little poisoner of his. I hate his private army that's poisoning the loyalty of the empire's troops. I hate his stupid face. I hate everything about him. One of my fondest memories is smashing his nose with my forehead when he came to gloat over me, after his thugs had broken my wrists. Ha! That startled him. I expect he had his eyes painted like a trollop's on the day of my trial, for I know I heard the bridge of his nose crack.”

“And
therefore
,” Wyrth prodded gently, “you will treat with the man?”

“Therefore. You don't sign peace treaties with your friends, Wyrth; you sign them with your enemies. And you don't do it because you trust each other, Morlock, but because an arrangement is the best way out of an intolerable situation. The art of fashioning a treaty is finding grounds for mutual advantage to the two parties. That's trust, if you want it: both sides will keep the agreement because it is in their interest to do so.”

“Hmph.”

“You may grunt like a skeptical pig, Morlock, but stranger things have happened. It's not as if I were telling you a horse had dropped from the sky.”

Morlock's face lit up with renewed interest. “Are you telling me?”

Ambrosia was taken aback by his reaction. “Uh—that is, er, why do you ask?”

“We'll put them in a carnival act—the Grunting Ambrosii,” Wyrth whispered, quite audibly, to the King.

“I had a dream you told me that a horse had dropped out of the sky,” Morlock explained to his sister.

She looked at him narrowly. “I can't say one did. But there is a report that one did, landing in a tree, no less.”

“Is it still there?”

“Morlock, haven't you been listening? I don't know that it was ever there. But if it ever was, no doubt it still is. How would a horse get down from a tree?”

“With help. And where was this?”

“The report came from Nalac, a village not far from the Gap of Lone.”

“I know it. The tavern there was where your soldiers arrested me, long ago.”

Ambrosia laughed. “Was that the place? End of the Kaenish War, wasn't it? If—Where the
hell
do you think you are going?” she demanded, for Morlock had stood and was walking to the door of the council chamber.

“Nalac,” Morlock replied, pausing.

“You are
not
,” Ambrosia stormed at him. “And what for?”

“He's thinking it's Velox, of course,” Wyrth suggested. “And so it might be, though I can't see how.”

The King found himself meeting his Grandmother's astonished gray eyes. Then he said, “Of course! The flying horse! Was his name Velox?”

Ambrosia's face took on a distant remembering expression. “But that was nearly three years ago.…”

Morlock shrugged his wry shoulders. “Flying horses are not everyday occurrences. I'll go to see.”

“Morlock, this is no joke. I need you here. We'll take the City Gate within a day or two, and then make our sortie into the city. Shortly thereafter we'll begin negotiations with Urdhven, if it looks like we can't kill him.”

“I'm not a soldier nor an ambassador. Wyrth can build you infernal devices as you need them. I'll be back in two calls
^*
or less.”

“I won't have you bouncing around the countryside for Urdhven to pluck like a ripe peach!” Ambrosia shouted. “If the Protector's Men take you, we'll have to bargain our left elbows away to get you back! And I won't do it! I'll let you rot this time, you worthless, bad-tempered bastard!”

“Ripe peaches don't bounce,” Morlock observed from the doorway. “I'll see you soon, my friends.”

“Good fortune, Morlocktheorn,” Wyrth called after him. “You mustn't worry about him, Lady Ambrosia—he'd have taken me if he'd thought it was at all dangerous.”

“So what if it is?” snapped Ambrosia, wiping her eyes. “I won't miss him any more than I miss my period. Tomorrow we move to retake the City Gate. Wyrth—what have you got that will help?”

*
Fifteen days, or one revolution of the minor moon, Trumpeter. See
appendix C:
Calendar and Astronomy

he leaves of the tree clenched like fists, growing inward. The branches hunched like shoulders, shrinking into the trunk, growing more slender with each moment. The bark, too, grew less dark, less dense; the moss on its side melted away like green snow in the spring sunlight. The sphere of crystal in Morlock's hands sang with a tone only he could hear, grew warm with a heat only he could feel, glowed with a light only he could see.

“A moment,” he called to the black horse lodged in the branches. “A moment more.”

The ungrowing tree had descended to saplinghood, bent almost double with the weight of the horse upon it. When the horse's hooves reached the ground, Morlock said (in the Westhold dialect all horses seemed to understand), “Now:
stand.
” The horse's hooves firm on the ground, he stood still. His blood stained the pale green-gold leaves of the tree beneath him.

Morlock ceased the ungrowing of the tree until he was sure that the horse's entrails, lacking the support of the tree, would not gush onto the earth. When he saw that they would not, he wondered why not. In fact—

“Why aren't you dead?” he demanded of the horse, who merely looked at him with silvery patient eyes and said nothing.

It would be worth knowing the answer to his question, Morlock reflected, but unless the horse actually did speak he doubted he would ever learn it. Passing by the fact that Morlock had last seen this horse
(if
it was this horse) hurtling into the sky years ago, he had (according to the evidence) fallen out of the sky among the branches of this tree, and he had been there (according to the reports) something like a month. The horse was not unscathed by these unusual adventures, but neither was he dead from impalement, hunger, or thirst.

Morlock's first thought, seeing him perched in the top branches of the ancient tree, had been that the horse was an illusion, set there by some sorcerer as a prank—or a trap. He had spent nearly a day in vision, testing the phenomenon with all the powers of Sight, before he approached within a bowshot.

His insight had told him that the horse was real, which did not, of course, preclude the possibility of a prank or a trap. But it meant that he could not simply walk away.

Morlock returned to ungrowing the tree and reduced it to the point where the horse could walk freely away. He called to the horse (“Velox!”), which approached him without suspicion. He knelt down and examined the horse's belly. There was only a superficial wound; it had been bleeding freely, but when Morlock looked at it the surface was a thick gleaming clot. There was no other wound—but there had been: looking for them, Morlock found a network of scars on the horse's belly.

“What are you, then?” he demanded, rising. “Horse, or something else—some immortal come to earth in horse form?” Again, the horse looked at him with wide silvery eyes and said nothing.

“Well, don't mind it,” Morlock said. “I will consider you my friend, Velox. If you are not him, you are, at least, equally remarkable.”

“So!” said an unfamiliar voice. “It
is
your horse. We had wondered.”

Morlock turned on his heel. Some distance behind him stood a youngish-looking man in the gray cape of a thain—least of the three ranks in the Graith of Guardians. In his right hand was a silver spear of Warding.

“You have not listened carefully enough,” said Morlock. “He may be mine or not. Who are you? I take it you know who I am.”

“I'm Thain Renic of the Guardians. Although I don't see your right to challenge me on the borders of the Wardlands.”

“We are not in the Wardlands, but the empire of Ontil. And I, as it happens, am a minister of the King.”

“Ah—as to that—who was it that said a country is only as large as its weapons will reach?” Renic shifted his feet to fighting stance and aimed his spear at Morlock's throat. Morlock watched with no apparent interest as dust from the dry plain settled down to obscure the high polish of the thain's boots. “And I have the weapon,” Renic continued.

Morlock directed some of the energy from the ungrown tree out of his crystalline focus and into the spear.

“If you—Spit and venom!” Renic screamed abruptly, and let go of his spear, which glowed green around the grip.

“Do not disturb me,” Morlock said, and turned back to the tree. Painstakingly, he inscribed the helices of force hidden in his crystalline focus onto the tree, leaf by leaf, branch by branch, forcing it to grow back to its former size. Or something like it: he had lost the force he had used against the thain's spear.

Night had risen before he lowered the now-dark focus and looked on the full-grown tree. He turned to find Renic staring at him.

“Are you still here?” he muttered.

“You are an exile manipulating power on the border of the realm I guard,” Renic said stiffly. “As such you are a threat that must be watched.”

Morlock grunted and pocketed his focus.

“Are you telling me,” the thain shrilled, “that you stood there for half a day simply and solely to rearrange the leaves of a
plant?
”

“Why should I tell you anything when you've told me nothing, not even your real name?” Morlock countered. “Nevertheless, I know who you are. Go home, ‘Thain.' Your duty is discharged.”

The man who had called himself Renic glared at him as he turned away. Morlock went to the bank of a nearby creek, where he had left the horse he had ridden there—a chestnut gelding named Ibann. Ibann was still there, quietly cropping grass, his reins bound to a nearby tree. Not far away was Velox, drinking deeply from the stream.

Morlock scowled. He had half hoped that Velox would take advantage of his freedom and wander off. He was not a great horseman, and he did not relish the prospect of conducting two horses over what was potentially hostile ground.

Still, he had come here because he would not abandon Velox again. “Come then,” he said to the black charger. “We go east from here.”

Morlock dreamed that night that his eye sockets were full of shadow. He turned from a glass that reflected his eyeless image and walked down a stairway that wound like a helix of cellular force. At each turn there was a mirrored door that opened as he passed. He never remembered some of the things he saw there. But at one turning the door opened and he saw a young girl with a face he did not know, but whose shoulders were as crooked as his own. She wore, incongruously, Renic's highly polished boots.

Morlock!
she shouted.
This way! Hurry!

I'm not the fool you think me
, he shouted at her.
No one is, except you. You have made yourself that way!

At the last turning of the endless stair the door opened and he saw a Companion of Mercy: red-cloaked, red-masked. In the red-gloved hands Morlock saw a glass container filled with a shadowy fluid; in the fluid his own eyes were floating, bright with vision. As he reached out for the glass, the red-gloved fingers opened and it fell. It struck the mirror-bright threshold. The glass did not break, but the eyes shattered to bright reflective bits.

Morlock looked again at the Companion, which had not moved since it let the glass fall. He stepped closer and peered into the eye sockets of its red mask.

Through the mask he saw into a room, lit by a single lamp on the floor. Next to the lamp lay the body of the Lord Protector with its throat cut. No blood seeped from the wound. The body cast a shadow on the wall.

The Protector's Shadow was not the shadow of Urdhven. It was of a seated man whose profile flowed like water as the lamp's single red flame flickered. The only stable thing about the shadow was its crooked shoulders. Nearby in the lamplit wall was a window filled with darkness.

I remember!
he said, his voice lifeless and dull in the dream. It was like his vision in the Dead Hills.

Too late!
said the shadow (and Urdhven's lifeless lips mimicked the words, mouthing them without sound). With a blinding sense of despair, Morlock felt the shadow spoke truth.

There was a flash of lightning. Morlock saw in the suddenly illumined window the outline of ruined buildings. It was the dead city, he suddenly knew—the Old City of Ontil.

He awoke to rain on his face. It was just before dawn. He wasted no time in striking camp and getting on the road.

Three hours later the day was scarcely brighter, the clouds of the storm were so deep. He was standing in heavy rain on a cliff above the town of Nalac. He stood among a cluster of budding trees, their black wet bark the exact color of his wet cloak. He watched, through the dimness of the rain, as figures in red cloaks moved about the streets below, drifting like dead leaves.

“Too late!” Morlock muttered. He wondered if he had made a mistake in coming here. He backed slowly away from the edge of the cliff, hoping the motion would attract no notice. Out of sight of the town, he turned to the horses.

Velox was carefully drinking water rilling down a new leaf dangling from a nearly bare branch. Morlock looked sideways at him and thought that no one would be able to tell this horse had been perched or impaled on a tree, drying like smoked beef, for a month or so. His wounds were completely healed, and Morlock thought his gaunt ribs had filled in. In fact, drenched with rain, he could hardly tell the horse that was fresh from the royal stables from Velox…except, in the dim light of the rain-drenched day, Morlock thought there was a faint radiance about Velox's eyes.

“My friend,” he said to Velox, “it's a long road to Ambrose. But you'll get me there, or no one will, I guess.” And he took the saddle from Ibann and put it on Velox.

Leading Ibann, he rode Velox down the sloping north side of the hill. He gave Nalac a wide berth, but eventually returned to the road, supposing that his enemies could not cover the whole distance between the Gap of Lone and Ambrose.

But as he cantered along the road that led south and east to Ambrose and Ontil, he crossed a stretch of red fabric stretched across the road. He didn't notice the sodden muddy strip of cloth until Velox leaped like a hunter to avoid it. Ibann did the same behind them, screaming, and Morlock wheeled Velox about to see the strip settling back down on the road. Ibann was gone.

It was then that Morlock noticed the watchers on either slope beside the road: tall, red-cloaked figures with eyes gleaming through their red masks.

Were they there before, or had the trap on the road summoned them somehow? What had happened to Ibann? These were mysteries that intrigued him as a Maker. He would never have a chance to solve them, though, if he didn't get away quickly: the shadows above him were beginning to close in.

He wheeled Velox again and fled up the road. But the road ahead was being closed off: two red-cloaked figures were pushing a laden death cart across the way. The place was well chosen: the brush on either side of the road was high and dense, interwoven with the surrounding trees.

They charged straight at the death cart. Morlock drew Tyrfing, and the dark crystalline blade shed light in the rain-etched gloom. He called out to Velox in the Westhold dialect all horses are born knowing. Velox left the ground almost as if his horseshoes were still imbued with metallic phlogiston. They cleared the death cart easily and splashed along up the empty road beyond.

Velox ran without terror, but with an endless vigor and speed that astonished Morlock. The Companions were far behind them when they came to a place where the road lay under shallow water for some considerable stretch. Morlock dismounted and led his remarkable steed off the road, and they blazed a sluggish (but, Morlock hoped, untraceable) path through open and rather marshy fields.

Late in the afternoon they were still at it. Morlock took turns riding Velox and leading him, for he knew they could afford no lengthy stops (not that Velox ever seemed to tire). They passed only one farm in that whole time. There a rain-soaked figure stood at the garth and watched them approach.

“Turn in here, traveler!” it cried as they passed, and glancing over, Morlock saw the face of the young girl from his dream, peering out from under a rain-heavy hood.